As Sweet As Honey Mead
by Meilan Firaga
Summary: On her first full day at Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament, Fleur Delacour discovers something she was truly not expecting in Hogsmeade. Sirius/Fleur


**A/N:** This is the first fic I wrote for 2012's Trick or Treat Challenge over at rarepair_shorts on LJ. The prompts I drew were as follows:

Trick: The Grimm

Treat: Bag of Candies

Location: The Hog's Head

This story takes place on October 31st during Goblet of Fire.

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**_As Sweet As Honey Mead_**

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Fleur Delacour was not sure that she liked England. It was cold, dreary, and far too full of crude Englishmen for her liking. Already she had been subjected to some of the worst pick-up lines imaginable, and she'd only been there for one day! _Honestly, _she thought, _at least the men in France had __some__ class._

Things were certainly different here.

The Headmaster of Hogwarts had called upon the Beauxbatons delegation at their carriage shortly after they had returned from entering their names into the Goblet of Fire. He had explained the existence of Hogsmeade village to Madame Maxime and continued on to say that he'd already been to the Durmstrang ship and offered to send a member of the Hogwarts staff to show them around. Madame Maxime readily accepted the offer, and well before midday Fleur and her peers found themselves traipsing down a path in the forest behind their Headmistress and a squat witch who called herself Professor Sprout.

Hogsmeade was charming in a very rural sort of way. Well, except for some of the residents. When Fleur had taken lunch at The Three Broomsticks with some of the other girls, a few of the locals had hovered tirelessly around their table offering to take them for tea at Madame Puddifoot's or drinks at the bar. The antics of the men followed them from shop to shop as they explored the town.

Finally, Fleur had enough. She ducked behind a display at Honeyduke's and cast a quick disillusionment charm on herself. It took longer than she expected for her friends to give up on her and leave the shop, their flock of admirers trailing along behind. Once they had, she lifted her charm and breathed a sigh of relief. A package of sweets caught her eye and she made short work of purchasing it before slipping out of the shop and down the street in the opposite direction from where her friends had gone. As she walked she noticed that the quaint cafes and shops that were so common in the other direction were beginning to thin out, replaced more and more by homes and empty lots.

Her eyes caught on the lopsided sign of a disreputable looking pub called The Hog's Head. Once glance was more than enough to tell her that its patrons were not the type she wished to associate with, but before she could turn away her eyes fell to an enormous black dog standing to one side of the door. It was staring directly at her.

She froze, her hand going to her heart. Divination was one of the elective courses she took at Beauxbatons, and she knew exactly what The Grimm was. Fleur had prayed that she would never see it, whether in the bottom of her teacup or otherwise. Her heart was pounding.

Though, the longer she looked, the less the poor creature looked like The Grimm. It was black as night, but its yellow eyes seemed haunted. It was certainly large, but its coat was matted in places, and she could nearly count its ribs. It looked half-starved and more than a little desperate.

Suddenly, the dog seemed to realize it was staring at her. It shook its great, shaggy head—almost like a human trying to clear away a particularly stubborn though. With a last, almost longing, glance at her, the dog turned away and trotted further down the street.

Before she even realized she was doing it, Fleur found herself following in the dog's footsteps. It wound from side to side down the path as they made their way out of the village and into the foothills of the mountains beyond. It never looked back, and Fleur was almost sure she could see it continuing to shake its head every few moments, as if still plagued by thoughts that it didn't want to have. The rational part of her brain screamed at her to turn around when they began to wind their way up the mountains themselves, but _something_ kept her moving. The dog had yet to acknowledge its pursuer, seemingly preoccupied with its own thoughts.

Out of nowhere, it turned and vanished—seemingly directly into the face of a large rock. Drawing closer, Fleur found a narrow crevice that split the stone, forming a tiny passage. _There must be a cave inside,_ she thought, sliding sideways into the opening. By the time that rational part of her brain caught up with her again, she had already stepped into the cavern and stopped dead in her tracks.

The dog was gone.

Where it should have been stood a man. His hair was long and tangled, his robes absolutely filthy, and even from a distance he had the haggard look of a man running from something. He turned to look at her, his eyes widening, and Fleur belatedly realized that she had gasped when she saw him. He swallowed and turned to face her completely, spreading his hands to the sides to show that he hadn't drawn a wand.

"Whatever you do, girl," he rasped, his voice sounding nearly as ragged as he looked, "do not take another step further." As if to emphasize his point, what she had thought was a large boulder on the back wall shivered and she found herself once again staring into a pair of yellow eyes. From the side of her vision, she saw the man glance behind him and then back at her. "Oh, hell."

"Iz zat…" her voice sounded tiny even to her own ears. "Iz zat a hippogriff?"

"It is, and you've looked him in the eye." He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again his voice was more solid, warm and deep. "They don't like disrespect, so mind your manners and give him a bow."

Fleur did as she was told, bending low while being careful never to take her eyes off the beast that was staring her down. After several, terrifying moments the creature lowered its head and she breathed a sigh of relief, straightening her back and taking a step forward before it quite settled into her mind that she was in a dark cave on the outskirts of the village with a hippogriff that could tear her limb from limb and a dog-turned-man that had somehow fallen into the category of "safe." The aforementioned dog-turned-man raised an eyebrow at her, taking a small step back. There was something strange about a full-grown man backing away from her, particularly one who was so obviously magical as to be an animagus, but she couldn't quite put her finger on exactly what it was.

"Well now," the man began, clearing his throat again, "since the unpleasantness has been handled, why don't you tell me why you followed me." It was now Fleur's turn to clear her throat, her eyes flicking across everything in the small cave ibut/i the man who was questioning her. How did she explain that she did it on the whim of some unnameable pull?

"I-" she began, stammering over her words. "I zought zat you were a stray dog. I have always liked zee animals..." she trailed off, unable to continue her train of thought. When she finally found herself able to glance back at him, the man was looking at her with laughter in his eyes.

"You're almost as bad as my godson," he said with a laugh after a moment. "No one in their right mind would believe a story like that." Just as quickly as he had smiled, he sobered, his face growing serious once more. "Go back to your schoolmates, girl. Forget everything you saw today." He scrubbed a hand over his face, now just as reluctant to look at her as she had been to look at him just moments before.

Fleur studied the man in front of her. She got the feeling that at one time he had been quite handsome, and might still be so under all the filth that clung to him. However, it was less dirt and more the desperation and loss that she had sensed from the dog that had him pushing her away. As his hand dragged across his face once more, a spark of recognition hit her brain, and a momentary panic flooded through her system. Before she could voice it, however, rationality kicked back in. "You are heem, aren't you?" she asked, her voice quiet. "Sirius Black?"

To say that he was shocked was an understatement. Sirius stared at her, eyes wide and jaw slack for several moments. When he finally regained his senses, his voice had regained its ragged tone. "If you recognize me, why aren't you running for the Aurors?"

Giving her bottom lip a tug with her teeth, Fleur tried to ignore the hungry way his eyes followed her every movement before he managed another of those thought-clearing head shakes she'd watched him indulge as a dog. "Eef you were a murderer," she answered him, giving her shoulders a slight shrug of indifference, "you would have tried to keel me already."

She knew she should be going. Between the way he was looking at her, and her own rising curiosity about the fugitive standing in front of her, Fleur knew that she could manage to miss the start of the Tournament entirely to spend the day in the dank cave. Sliding her hand into her pocket, she backed toward the entrance of the cave. Her fingers closed around the bag of chocolates she had purchased and she was struck by a sudden idea. She pulled the bag from her pocket and crouched to place it on the ground near the fissure in the rock.

"Happy Halloween, Sirius," she quipped, a timid smile crossing her lips. "I will visit you again."


End file.
